Aburi Festival & my Paramount Chief Professor

Aburi Festival

After the parade at Cape Coast I was too tired to stay for the Durbar (sortof a party, but also involves speeches). When I went up to Aburi for their festival on October 14 I was too tired from being out in the field to get up early and so I missed the parade, but I was there for the Durbar. Well, I was there for the part of the Durbar where there was dancing and lots of interesting greeting of and by the Paramount Chief. Then the vice prime minister or some such important political figure showed up (late) and there was more greeting. Then the political speeches and the discussion of what development project would be carried out in the following year began. My host didn't feel like translating and so this was not as interesting, so we went off in search of lunch.

Some things I learned:

(1) The ritual of greeting is very specific in Ghana. After the chief arrives, then people begin to come forward to greet him. There is usually a dance that is performed by each individual as they move forward to greet the chief. Each person performed a unique dance, although there were some similarities. The dancing appears to my untrained eye as somewhat hectic and confusing, but I could also tell that it was precisely executed. Hammond explained that if you dance poorly at the festival it is very insulting, and so all of the dances were very precise and practiced. The chief stayed seated throughout this whole process and depending on the status of the person coming they might just approach the chief or go all the way up and shake his hand.

(2) After the chief has been greeted, then he came down and made a circle around the grounds to greet everyone who had come.

(3) The linguists are people who speak for the chief. It is not proper for the chief to speak in public, so instead he whispers to the linguist who makes the announcement. The linguists also carry staffs with top ornaments that have some symbolic meaning or represent a popular parable.

(4) The political minister arrived late, after the chief had already greeted everyone. Instead of going out again, he sent his linguists to greet the minister on his behalf. The minister came down from his seat to accept the greeting of the linguists; this signified that (at least on the chief's turf) the chief is higher ranking than the political minister.

(5) Bananas and groundnuts (peanuts) make a very satisfying lunch.

My professor for Medical Geography, Prof. Nabila, is a paramount chief from the northern region. I am constantly baffled by the particular forms of respect that my fellow students pay to him.

First off, we have become totally spoiled in the class because he always gives us juice boxes to drink during class (we are only four students). But, he never distributes the drinks. One of his aids will deliver them and then he will call on one of the students to distribute them (we always serve prof first). Last week this became apparent because he made a joke that he was going to serve the drink and was telling me how this never happens. But, before he could, one of the students had jumped up to relieve him of the responsibility.

Class usually takes place in his office, but we wait around in our regular classroom to be informed that Prof. is ready for us to come up. When we enter the room, at least the one student also from the north, and sometimes other students, do a kneeling bow to him. He is never allowed to carry anything, not even to move it from the bookshelf to his desk after he has located it. Professors in general are seen here as a long ways above students and are shown a lot of deference. This professor, however, is perhaps my most humble professor. He seems to accept the deference paid to him as part of the responsibility of being a paramount chief, but he doesn't act like he expects it or that he is particularly superior, just this is the way culture defines the relationship.

What is most odd to me is the ways that he is trying to change the culture of his people and the ways he accepts the cultural norm. For example, Prof. only has 5 children because he works on population studies and he knows the effect of large families on population growth. I was shocked, I though 5 children was a lot. That was until my mates explained that the expectation is for him to have 20 or 30 children, and some have around 80. We also have interesting dialogues about topics such as malnutrition and the cultural beliefs that children should not be fed eggs. He is very upset about the cultural practices towards giving inadequate protein to children. The idea with eggs is that if the child gets a taste for eggs, they will steel the eggs before the chicken can even lay them. But these traditional beliefs act to deny protein from the most vulnerable members of society. Prof. talks about how he uses the Durbar at festival time to do some education of his community around these issues.

It is a difficult dilemma for me to understand the process of cultural adaptation. There is a lot of talk among my fellow foreign students as to the negative aspects of western culture influencing people here. I will not deny that this is the case, particularly when it comes to environmental protection. The current implementation of western cultural values is leading to severe environmental degradation that used to be preserved by traditional values. It is not that western culture doesn’t also have values to preserve the environment. Unfortunately, there is a lag in how values are adopted. The values (or superstitions) that kept people out of the forests and preserved the environment are abandoned early along with the value to exploit the land for immediate capital gain. The education and adoption of western values of preservation or modern interpretations of the traditional values of conservation take more time to be articulated in the community. This lag causes a period of severe environmental degradation. This lag causes some of my fellow students to say that we are wrong for sharing our cultural values. However, as Prof. has been sharing, there are a lot of traditional cultural beliefs, such as the idea that children shouldn't get protein, that need to be changed for the betterment of the country. It makes me want to study anthropology and culture change to understand the process better. I agree with my mates, that education all around is important. Both education that allows for the articulation, and thus preservation of those beneficial cultural values, as well as education that allows for a more well rounded adaptation of outside values that lead to the betterment of the population.